A MEMOIR OF ROBERT BLINCOE An Orphan Boy; SENT FROM THE WORKHOUSE OF ST. PANCRAS, AT LONDON, AT SEVEN YEARS OF AGE TO ENDURE THE Horrors of a Cotton Mill, THROUGH HIS INFANCY AND YOUTH, WITH A MINUTE DETAIL OF HIS SUFFERINGS, BEING THE FIRST MEMOIR OF THE KIND PUBLISHED.

by: John Brown (- d 1829)

Publication date: 1832

Usage: Public Domain Mark 1.0

Topics: Robert Blincoe, Orphan, Secular Poor Laws, Statute of Artificers, Elizabethan Poor Law, Cotton Mill, Lowdham Mill, Litton Mill, Water Mill

Collection: journals_contributions; journals

Language: English

MANCHESTER:

PRINTED FOR AND PUBLISHED BY J. DOHERTY, 37, WITHY GROVE

1832

Bi(bli)ographics

The emotionally moving narrative about the orphan Robert Blincoe (c. 1792–1860) covering his years as a child and juvenile trapped in the old English poor-law-system of the late 18th and early 19th century.

Secular poor-laws in England developed in the 16th century in part as a consequence of the Protestant Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries, which until then had organized in their parishes the assistance for the poor. “Broad in scope and paternal in spirit, the Elizabethan Poor Law provided work for the unemployed, education for the children, relief for the impotent, and punishment for those able but unwilling to work.”[1]

During the industrial revolution the cities became the focal point of the care for the poor. At all times the secular poor-laws suffered by bad administration and enforcement. The responsibility was with the parishes and the local police.

A down-to earth description of the working and living conditions of the employees in the cotton mills between 1827 and 1831, supported by statistics can be found in the work by James Phillips KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH, M. D, listed below.

The ‘Statute of Apprentices’ [Statute of Artificers] from 1563 (occasionally modified) regulated Robert Blincoe’s parish pauper apprenticeship in the cotton mills (Lowdham Mill near Nottingham, Nottinghamshire & Litton Mill, near Tideswell, Derbyshire) - both water mills. Indentured at the age of 7 from the St Pancras workhouse in London his time as an apprentice in the cotton mills lasted, due to withheld information, from 1799 until 1813 instead of the usual 7 years.

This memoir of Robert Blincoe was written by John Brown, a journalist of Little Bolton, Lancashire (- d. 1829) – details about his life to be found at - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Brown,_John_(d.1829)_(DNB00)

The memoir was first published in 1828 by Richard Carlile (1790-1843) in the periodical ‘The Lion’. Later, in 1832, Carlile had the Memoir reprinted in his periodical ‘The Poor Man’s Advocate’. Details about Carlile’s life can be found at - http://spartacus-educational.com/PRcarlile.htm

This reprint as pamphlet printed and published by J[ohn] Doherty (1798–1854) of Manchester seems to be either the second or third printing of Blincoe’s memoir.

Literature:

[1] Raymond G. COWHERD, The Humanitarian Reform of the English Poor Laws from 1782 to 1815, in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Jun. 15, 1960), pp. 328-342, page 328

Alysa LEVENE, Parish apprenticeship and the old poor law in London, in: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 63, No. 4 (NOVEMBER 2010), pp. 915-941

James Phillips KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH, M. D., The moral and physical condition of the working classes employed in the cotton manufacture in Manchester, 1832, available in this collection as Community Text at -
https://archive.org/details/KayShuttleworth1832Themoralandphysicalcondition

Robert OWEN, Observations on the effect of the manufacturing system : with hints for the improvement of those parts of it which are most injurious to health and morals. Dedicated most respectfully to the British legislature, London 1815,
available as Community Text at - https://archive.org/details/b21453470

Edwin CANNAN, The history of local Rates, 1912, available as Community Text at - https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.175126

E. M. LEONARD, (of Girton College), The early history of English poor relief, 1900, available as Community Text at - https://archive.org/details/earlyhistoryofen00leonrich

Mark BLAUG, The myth of the old Poor Law and the making of the new, in JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, XXIII (June 1963), pp.151-184

James Stephen TAYLOR, The Mythology of the Old Poor Law, in: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Jun., 1969), pp. 292-297

Information regarding the The Workhouse in St Pancras, London, can be found at - http://www.workhouses.org.uk/StPancras/

James R. SIMMONS Jr., editor, Factory Lives: Four Nineteenth-Century Working-Class Autobiographies, 2007